What is a good program to search my hard disk? I am frustrated that I
can find documents on the web with Google much, much faster than I can
find them on my own hard disk by a search - and Google gives me info.
about the context of the key words, near matches, full address of the
document and some ranking (with other options of words near each
other, date filters etc.). I'm using Windows 2000 - the built in
search is
slow, and the index option very awkward to use. What program can I use
to find documents (.doc, .txt) files using keywords (ideally PDFs,
PPT, XLS, HTM etc. would also be searched - and even the text kept in
TIF/PSD too)? If the program is good enough, cost doesn't matter much,
nor does the time to learn
to use it, but I need convincing to buy it! I'm not too keen on the
Google hardware widget.

Hello and thanks for your question.

It does seem odd that Google puts the whole internet universe within a
seconds reach, while our own hard drive is so hard to search.

I've located two products that meet your description:

"Enfish desktop products put all of your information in one place and
in context with information that is relevant to you. Enfish does the
work for you by automatically organizing and cross-referencing e-mail,
contacts, appointments, documents, favorite Web sites - according to
what is relevant to each individual user.  'You need never lose a file
or piece of information again.'"
The Enfish product comes in three strengths--'Find' "Personal' and
'Professional'
Enfish Desktop Products
http://www.enfish.com/desktop/features.asp

"The Sleuthhound! was originally developed to locate any word or
phrase in many different file formats on your hard drive with
lightning fast speed. The Sleuthhound! is designed like a Web Search
Engine and has an easy-to-use interface which enables you to search
your computer's documents using the same principles of Web Search
Engines. The Sleuthhound! displays search matches in a Results
Browser, just like the results shown by popular Web Search Engines
like Google, Alta Vista or Vivisimo. The Sleuthhound! will display the
relevant search matches in your documents with keywords highlighted.
View the search results and the keyword location in the new enhanced
internal browser. Searches can be modified to find new results within
searches. Make new searches directly from the browser."
The Sleuthhound
http://www.rosecitysoftware.com/Sleuthhound/

I've omitted a third program that appears limited to searching .htm
pages that you've downloaded to your hard drive.

The following review discusses the these products, gives prices, and
provides links to the CNET download site for easy downloading.
Lost a file? No problem! Find it with these 3 tools
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2835361,00.html

If you require any clarification, I'd appreciate it if you would hold
off on rating this answer until I have an opportunity to respond.

Search terms used:
search local drive
sleuthhound review

Good luck and happy searching!
richard-ga

The info I needed with a pointer to an authoritative comparative
review (ZDNet). Half an hour of Google-ing by me had not found these,
merely various file-manager replacements, one of which I downloaded
and did not have the fast search facilities I needed. It seems there
are not a great number of search programs out there - maybe most
people have better disk filing systems than me. (I have the hard disc
contents from many generations of computer all on my current computer,
and regularly need to find old info.) Note that Sleuthound demo
version is limited to 2000 files - making its speed and size of index
hard to compare with Enfish.